Friday, April 04, 2008

5 Things You Should Do Before the Arrival of the Potential Psycho Who Answered Your Craigslist Ad

I once saw this Law & Order: SVU episode where this serial killer would find single women to kill by scouting the classifieds for ads for girlie sofas. His theory was that anyone selling a flowery sofa is probably a woman lives alone with no one around to hear her scream. He would offer to buy the sofa and kill them when he arrived.

(Sadly, it took Detective Stabler and Benson a few days to find these murdered women. Apparently, owners of chintzy sofas don’t have that many friends to notice that they’re missing.)

I remembered this episode after I posted an ad on Craigslist selling my old TV and decided that the dude who answered it must be coming to kill me, too. Here is my to-do list to prepare for his arrival:

1) Bring up Craigslist ad onto computer so that, if I should be murdered, investigators will see it and know what happened and who did it.

2) Unholster taser gun (a Christmas gift from Dad after one of my college classmates was stabbed to death) in case things get ugly. But hide it in bedside table drawer so he doesn’t think I’m a total psycho.

3) Put Mace in back pocket within reach.

4) Plan to leave door open the whole time he’s here.

5) Note that he asked to pick up the TV “at 21:00” and realize that if he’s ex-military, he could probably snap my neck faster than you can say “Actually I only take cash. But, uh...forced, unwanted sex is okay, too!”